A Canadian Explores All Things Scandinavian & Nordic

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ScandiCourses!

I enjoy taking free online courses, not necessarily with any end goal in mind, but just for the sake of learning new things. Over the last couple of years, I’ve taken everything my local public library offers that I’m interested in and now I’ve moved on to Coursera in my search for interesting courses to take. On Coursera, you have to pay if you want a certificate out of it, but if you don’t care about that you can enroll for free (this may vary by course; I’m only going by the ones I’ve enrolled in so far). I’ve been taking an introductory course in Linguistics for a few weeks already. But I was beside myself with joy today when I discovered the course Scandinavian Film and Television from the University of Copenhagen! I enrolled immediately!

I have also been learning Norwegian on Duolingo for the past couple of months. A friend told me about the site and I love it! The game-style format makes learning easy. One of the reasons I’m learning Norwegian is so that I can watch Norwegian TV shows online even if they don’t have English subtitles, such as 4-Stjerners Middag and Himmelblå. After I feel I have a good foundation in Norwegian I will start learning Swedish.

As a side note, I took two years of French in school but thought I’d forgotten most of it, so while on Duolingo I took a look at their French lessons to see if any of it would come back to me. It turns out I remember far more than I realized and I’ve been breezing through the lessons. But I find that I don’t really care for the French language. It’s easy for me, but I don’t enjoy it. On the other hand, Norwegian is more difficult for me, and sometimes I feel like my brain is at capacity and I can’t possibly cram in any new vocabulary, but I love the language so much that I look forward to my lessons each day. I am progressing slowly but surely.

If anyone knows of any other sources for online courses (in English, and preferably free!) from or about Scandinavia, please share in the comments.